In contemporary post-conflict Sierra Leone, women have managed to secure 13.5 per cent of seats in parliament – without affirmative action in place, thanks to women’s groups’ and coalitions’ mobilisation and activism. While the political resistance to Sierra Leone having a quota was high, the women’s movement has succeeded in forcing the political parties and the government to recognise that it is no longer politically viable to sidestep women’s rights, should they wish to capitalise on women’s voting power. As women’s organisations, in particular the 50/50 group, continue the struggle to introduce a quota, the challenge for Sierra Leonean women is how to ensure that the quota project is not hijacked by the male-dominated political establishment. To this aim, this article examines the ongoing efforts to politically consciencise women parliamentarians, society and political parties.

For decades, critical mass theory shaped expectations about the ways female politicians would behave in office. Newer studies, however, have challenged the theory's premise that “token” women will avoid championing women's interests while women serving in more gender‐diverse bodies will work together to advance them. In fact, many in the discipline now believe it is time to leave the idea of critical mass behind. These new studies have significantly advanced our knowledge of the link between women's descriptive and substantive representation. But the move away from critical mass leaves unresolved the question of how female legislators will adapt their policy priorities based on changes in the size of the female delegation. I seek to answer this question and hypothesize that the more women who serve in Congress, the less attention each female member of Congress will give to women's issues, and the more diverse the female agenda will become. This diversification should not, however, result in lower overall levels of attention to women's issues. Because responsibility for substantive representation is shared, with each woman continuing to contribute as the delegation grows, the women's agenda can diversify while attention to women's issues actually increases. An analysis of bill sponsorship data spanning 60 years provides support for my theory. I show that when the size of the female delegation grows, women increase both the breadth and depth of their collective legislative agenda—simultaneously offering increased substantive representation and representation across a wider range of topics.

Bachelet, Michelle. 2015. “Women as Agents of Peace and Stability: Measuring the Results.” In Women on the Frontlines of Peace and Security, 87–112. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press.

Author: Michelle Bachelet

Annotation:

Summary:

“UNSCR 1325 has many goals, but focuses on two points: addressing the problems women face as victims or survivors of war, and promoting women as agents of peace. More attention has been directed toward protecting women and girls than toward promoting their role in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and postconflict recovery and peace-building. Ordinary people are now more familiar with the plight of women and girls plight in conflict zones, specifically widespread and sometimes organized sexual violence. More decisive action is needed, but at least after decades of discussing violence against women as a weapon of war, such violence provokes moral revulsion, and most agree that something must be done to address it.

“But protection from violence had long been discussed before UNSCR 1325. The resolution emphasized the importance of women’s participation in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace-building. While this has been validated and endorsed many times since the adoption of UNSCR 1325, relatively few people actually know what it entails, why it is important, and what evidence connects it with more durable and stable peace and security. Why do we need quotas for women in parliaments and legislatures? Why do we need women at the peace table?” (Bachelet 2014, 96).

Sex and World Peace unsettles a variety of assumptions in political and security discourse, demonstrating that the security of women is a vital factor in the security of the state and its incidence of conflict and war. The authors compare micro-level gender violence and macro-level state peacefulness in global settings, supporting their findings with detailed analyses and color maps. Harnessing an immense amount of data, they call attention to discrepancies between national laws protecting women and the enforcement of those laws, and they note the adverse effects on state security of abnormal sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and inequitable realities in family law, among other gendered aggressions. The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. Their research challenges conventional definitions of security and democracy and shows that the treatment of gender, played out on the world stage, informs the true clash of civilizations. In terms of resolving these injustices, the authors examine top-down and bottom-up approaches to healing wounds of violence against women, as well as ways to rectify inequalities in family law and the lack of parity in decision-making councils. Emphasizing the importance of an R2PW, or state responsibility to protect women, they mount a solid campaign against women's systemic insecurity, which effectively unravels the security of all. (Summary from Columbia University Press)

Table of Contents

1. Roots of National and International Interests

2. What Is There to See

3. When We Do See the Global Picture

4. The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States

This article examines two decades of strengthening, expansion, and diffusion of gender quota laws in Latin America. The analysis departs from studies of quotas’ adoption, numerical effectiveness, or policy impacts, instead focusing on states’ use of coercive power to integrate women into public and private institutions. Viewing these policies in light of feminist theories of the poststructuralist state reveals how state institutions act to restructure government and promote gender equality. In building this argument, the article presents an up-to-date empirical survey and conceptual understanding of quota evolution in Latin America, including recent developments in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Uruguay.

The rapid global spread of quotas for women constitutes one of the most significant political developments of the last thirty years. It transformed the composition of legislatures worldwide. Yet we lack a solid understanding of the forces driving quota diffusion. In this article, we consider how global pressure from the international women's movement affects national gender quota adoption. In the first quantitative analysis of this question on a global scale, we use event history techniques to examine global, transnational, and national influences on quota adoption in 149 countries between 1989 and 2008. Contributing to work on international norm diffusion, we find a crucial role for women's activism, but uncover a negative interaction between increased global pressures and domestic ties to women's transnational organizing. We suggest global pressure to adopt quotas may be weakened by the diverse agendas of women's activist organizations, by perceived threats to male elites posed by women's agitation, or both.

As numerous conflicts have come to an end in Africa over the past two decades, women's movements have sought to advance a women's rights agenda through peace accords; through constitutional, legislative, and electoral reforms; as well as through the introduction of gender quotas. This article focuses the impact women's movements have had in shaping constitutions after periods of turmoil, particularly in areas of equality, customary law, antidiscrimination, violence against women, quotas, and citizenship rights. It demonstrates how countries that have come out of major civil conflict and violent upheaval in Africa after the mid-1990s—but especially after 2000—have made more constitutional changes with respect to women's rights than other African countries. The second part of the article provides two examples of how women's movements influenced constitutional changes pertaining to gender equality as well as the difficulties they encountered, particularly with respect to the international community.

This article examines the experiences of women occupying reserved seats on the suku councils of Timor-Leste (each of which represents a number of small villages). The limited political participation of these women is often ascribed to patriarchal ideas within rural areas, and the need for capacity development. This article argues, however, that there are further structural issues at play, whereby the interaction between traditional and modern governance makes it difficult for women occupying reserved seats to make their mark. While gender quotas can be a useful tool to encourage women’s political participation, these structural issues need to be recognised and addressed in order to truly empower women.

A growing body of literature focuses on the attitudes produced by women's representation. One area of particular interest is the effect of women's representation on perceptions of corruption in government. Multiple scholars have found that citizens view women in government as more trustworthy and less corrupt. Others have suggested that the link between gender and corruption is spurious or dependent upon regime characteristics. Additionally, many studies of women's effect on corruption were published prior to the widespread adoption of gender quotas, when levels of women's representation were considerably lower. We argue that the relationship between women and perceptions of corruption can be better understood by applying an integrated model of representation, which explores the effects of formal, descriptive, and substantive representation on perceptions of corruption. Using a time-series analysis of 140 countries worldwide from 1998–2011, this study finds that women's descriptive and substantive representation are correlated with lower perceptions of corruption. However, gender quotas are correlated with higher perceptions of corruption among political elites.